Ignorant announcers or ignorant listeners.

As Sheila and I were watching Connecticut play the Florida Gators yesterday, we found ourselves pulling for the UConn Huskies.  Our blood pressure started to rise once we began to notice a severe bias in favor of the Gators.  All during the game they pointed out the good plays of the Gators.  We saw the Gator cheerleaders, but not the Husky cheerleaders.  We both observed and finally I said, “I have never heard such bias by announcers.”

Then I went to my twitter account on my tablet and put search in for “announcer bias”. Others had seen the same thing and were completely enraged. Into the tweets at number twenty someone tweeted something that shocked me.  They revealed that they liked the idea of having “teamcasts” from both teams as well as a neutral team of announcers.  Suddenly our ignorance was revealed as the reason for our frustration and high blood pressure.

I thought of some lessons from this experience:

-Ignorance can lead to a negative attitude. Knowledge can develop peace within.

-If you want to see the good in someone, you can see it.

-Read the first four books of the New Testament and you discover that Jesus has a bias toward the sinners who are repenting regardless of their occupation or reputation.

-He frames the religious, self-righteous as needing to turn to God.

-God has a bias to His children.

-Jesus has a bias to those who believe in Him.

“Jesus did not come with a sword in his hands; he came with nails in his hands.  He did not come to bring judgment, but he came to bear judgment.”

Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus, P. P. 54

After we learned this, we watched Kentucky play Wisconsin without the same negative attitudes about the announcers.We had chosen the neutral announcers and knew what was going on. 

Do you have a negative prejudice toward certain people because of a pre-conceived notion?

Larry Wishard